


Not Nearly Enough

by skarlatha



Series: How Much? [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drinking & Talking, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:21:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2692814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a very interesting dream, Rodney jumps on board the clue bus. But is he willing to take the next step? (Part of a series, but can be read as a standalone story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Nearly Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is the same story as "Way Too Much." This one is from Rodney's POV and the other is from John's. They can stand alone, or they can be read together. Your choice. :)
> 
> Also, this was originally posted several years ago at wraithbait.com, so if it sounds familiar, you probably read it there first.

I think I need a vacation. I thought I was handling the stress of living in Atlantis pretty well, but I've started having very strange dreams, which is surely a sign of some sort of stress-related disease. I would ask Beckett about it, but he'd probably refer me to Heightmeyer, and I have no desire to go through that again.

The latest dream started out innocently enough; the team had gone on a mission where Sheppard had been attacked by cats (in retrospect, this development really should have clued me in to the fact that it was only a dream). When Dream-Sheppard collapsed, unable to breathe, I dragged him to safety and performed mouth-to-mouth on him—only the mouth-to-mouth had shifted into something far less medically necessary, and then suddenly the two of us had been naked on the couch in my quarters...

Needless to say, it's been a little difficult to look at Sheppard the same way after that dream, not to mention the fact that I can't even look at my couch without having flashbacks anymore. And those flashbacks tend to have a somewhat noticeable effect on me, which makes me very grateful that the Ancients didn't believe in communal sleeping quarters, because I wouldn't particularly enjoy parading around in public areas with my cock standing at attention like it's high school and I've just discovered the joys of sex.

Not to mention that if we lived in a barracks-style setup, I'd probably see Sheppard even more than I do now, and at some point I'd be near a lot of people when I suddenly pictured him naked with his limbs tangled up in mine on one of the bunks, and it would be incredibly difficult to hide things for long.

And I need to hide these things, because I'm not interested in Sheppard. Sure, he's a nice guy, and he's occasionally interesting to talk to, and he's the only one I trust to keep me alive while I'm busy keeping everyone else alive, but I'm not interested in him. He's a man, and I've never been particularly interested in men before, and the only reason I have even the slightest bit of something distantly approaching what might possibly in some definitions be called something resembling interest in Sheppard is because my unconscious mind threw me a curve ball in the form of an erotic dream about him. Dreams don't actually mean anything. They're only one step up from hallucinations, psychologically speaking. Or at least that's what Teyla told me that Heightmeyer told her when she was dreaming about being a Wraith.

I can see why I might dream about Sheppard, though, even if he is a man and I'm not gay. It's completely impossible for me to fantasize about stupid people, or even people of average intelligence. Not that I'd ever admit that. But it's like imagining having sex with gorillas—they have feelings, too, and some of the facial expressions are the same, but they're a completely different species than I am, which makes it just wrong. Same with normal people. Fantasizing about normals isn't far removed from bestiality, and I'm actively turned off by that.

Sheppard isn't normal. He could join Mensa if he wanted, although it would take a while to get his membership up and running since we're in a different galaxy and I'm just not sure how Mensa International would react to seeing a home address on a membership form that says "The Lost City of Atlantis," especially considering that no one without security clearance even knows we've left Earth at all. Even so, as LocSec of the top-secret Atlantis chapter I'm sure I could push his application through more quickly than usual. Sheppard would make a good addition to our chapter. Maybe I could even get him to come to our meetings sometimes when we're discussing...

I feel my pants get slightly tighter, and I glare down at myself. Stupid, stupid cock. And I was just thinking about Sheppard's mind, not his rakish hair or his strangely-colored eyes or the way his shirt fits just right on his lean but muscular frame... and this is not helping, not one bit.

I really only have two options. I can take care of things here myself, being very very careful to only think about sexy blonde women and absolutely not about insanely hot lieutenant colonels because for God's sake I'm not gay, or I can go to the lab and lose myself in the most abstract theoretical project I can find to help me stop thinking about this.

I glance over at my sofa and sigh as my little colonel gives me another nudge to let me know he's not going away any time soon. I guess there's no reason I can't go with both options. As I walk toward my couch, my hands find the zipper on my pants, and I spend the next few minutes trying not to notice that the woman I'm picturing has startling green eyes that change colors depending on the lighting.

 

 

 **Evening**  
At the end of the day, I'm sitting on a lab stool peering at something unspeakably complex on my computer screen when Sheppard walks by the door of the lab. Not that this is unusual—it seems to happen a lot these days—but it has gotten a bit awkward since The Dream and the resulting below-the-waist stupidity, and it's especially awkward tonight when only an hour ago I was sitting on my couch stroking myself while trying not to think about him. Which, depressingly enough, didn't work out quite as well as I'd hoped. I'd had to stop four separate times and re-start my fantasy because Sexy Blonde kept morphing in a very unsettling way into Hot Colonel.

Sheppard steps into the doorway of the lab and leans against the door frame. "Working late again?"

I glance up for the briefest second, then return my eyes to the screen, surprised at how difficult it is to tear my gaze away from the door. "Keeping Atlantis from certain destruction is a full-time job," I deadpan.

Sheppard shrugs, and even though I'm quite intentionally not looking at him, my peripheral vision picks up the movement. After a few moments pass in silence, I look back up from the screen and frown at him. "Is there something in particular I can do for you, Colonel?" I can think of a few things to suggest, I think, then I pale at the direction my thoughts are taking. With an IQ as high as mine, you'd think I'd have better control over my mental processes, even if I don't seem to have much control over the physical ones.

If Sheppard notices the sudden lack of color on my face, he doesn't mention it. Not that there's much chance he didn't notice—Sheppard seems to notice everything, despite the vapid pretty-boy persona he likes to project. "Not really," he answers.

"Then what are you doing here?"

Sheppard shrugs again. "What can I say? I'm bored."

"That's wonderful," I say, only half-faking my exasperation. Really, does he have to look so good all the time? Even when we're on off-world missions and he's covered in dirt and sweat, he still manages to look like the cover of Playgirl. Not that I would know about that, being as I'm neither gay nor a woman, but I can imagine. "I, on the other hand, am busy."

"What are you working on?" He takes a few steps toward me, and I really, really wish he wouldn't. It's bad enough when he's fifteen feet away. I don't even want to imagine how much worse it would get if he breached my personal space.

"Nothing you'd understand." He probably would understand, though. As much as I constantly belittle his intellect, he's actually a pretty smart guy, and even I am sometimes impressed by his mathematical abilities, hence my earlier meditation on his joining Mensa. If he was a woman, I'd totally hit that, non-blonde and all. But he's not. Obviously. Just look at his pecs, which are outlined nicely by his fitted black shirt. Totally not a woman.

"Can I help?"

"No." I close my eyes, then open them back as images from The Dream return, unbidden. Really, this is getting out of hand. It was only a dream, for heaven's sake. Weird things happen in dreams all the time, and they certainly don't mean that I want to jump Colonel Sheppard in real life. He probably wouldn't look as good naked in real life, anyway.

Not that I think he looked good naked in the dream, of course. Absolutely not. I like women. Women women women. Women with their breasts and their curves. I've always had a soft spot for smart ladies with blonde hair, although recently I've found myself open to brunettes as well. I like their beautiful green eyes and their messy hair...

Dammit.

"Rodney?" Sheppard asks, and I realize that I'd been quiet for a whole two-point-five seconds, which is a long time, for me.

"What?" I snap. I just want him to leave me alone. If he would just leave me alone, I could get past this whole weirdness and move on with my life. There are more important things to think about than how pretty the colonel's eyes are.

He grins his annoying little I'm-so-gosh-darn-cute grin at me, which makes me want to kiss him and sucker-punch him in equal measures, which only annoys me further because I shouldn't want to kiss him at all, which makes me picture what it would be like to kiss him, which makes me remember The Dream, which prompts me to call up the filthiest images of women my considerable mind can come up with, which doesn't do anything for me, which annoys me further because my baser instincts were plenty interested in the dream images and have no excuse for not reacting to the female fantasies. No excuse whatsoever.

"What do you want?" I ask again, forcing my gaze determinedly back to the screen in an effort to make him feel unwelcome.

"I was thinking," he begins.

"Good for you." I scowl back up at him. "Need any pointers? I can imagine how difficult it must be to get in the habit."

He makes a face at me. "I got a bottle of whiskey from Earth on the last Daedalus shipment. I'm looking for someone to help me drink it."

Yeah, like I need to be alone with Sheppard in close proximity while intoxicated. God only knows what my less-than-intelligent anatomy would do with that situation in its current state. "Ask Teyla."

He snorts with laughter. "Teyla? Even if she said yes, which she wouldn't, it's no fun to drink while your drinking buddy is oh-so-subtly judging you."

A corner of my mouth twitches upward. Thank goodness it's the corner he can't see from where he's standing, because I don't want him to know that I think he's funny. Somehow it doesn't seem like a very big jump from I-think-you're-funny to I-want-to-lick-your-nipples. "How about Ronon, then?"

"Ronon's on duty in the morning," Sheppard says. "Anyway, I thought it would be fun to hang out with you."

"Me?" My eyes dart up toward him, but I don't trust myself to let myself continue looking at him, so I look away again. "Why me?"

"Because you're the most annoying person I've ever met, but at least you're interesting." He pauses, then continues with a slightly softer voice. "Besides, you're my best friend, and you work too hard."

"Okay," I surprise myself by saying. I get up from my stool and follow him out the door. We're halfway to his quarters before I remember that I've agreed to something very stupid indeed. He gives me one little compliment and I trot after him like Mary's little lamb, even though I'd been completely opposed to the plan only moments before. It's disgusting, really, and I ought to be ashamed of myself. I really ought to be.

 

 

 **Two hours later**  
"And then Teyla pulls Ford out of the cave, and she says..." Sheppard stops abruptly, gasping for breath through his laughter, then continues on with as good a Teyla impression as anyone with this much whiskey in his system could give, "She says, 'It is unbecoming for a warrior to be covered in guano.'" He doubles over, laughing so hard that no sound is coming out.

I'm laughing too, just as hard. I feel tears rolling down my cheeks. For several minutes, we concentrate on controlling our laughter, which is difficult because any time our eyes meet, we start laughing again, just like schoolgirls in the cafeteria. Finally, I stand up on wobbly legs and cross to the window, staring out across the water so that I don't have to look him in the face. It helps, and the laughter slowly dies down.

I stand there for a while longer after the laughter passes, running through mathematical equations in my head to try and diagnose just how drunk I am. Sheppard has stopped laughing, too, and I can feel his eyes on me as I stand by the window. It's a long time before he speaks, but when he does, he drops a bombshell.

"Teyla doesn't love me," Sheppard says, suddenly.

"What?" I turn toward him, raising my eyebrows. He is sitting on his sofa with his head in his hands, drawing ragged breaths. Only moments ago, he was laughing hysterically, and now he looks about as miserable as a person can look. It's enough to give me mental whiplash. I had no idea he was even interested in Teyla. Surely I would have noticed.

"She doesn't love me," he says again.

I clear my throat, struggling to wrangle my scattered mental faculties since the conversation seems to have gotten serious. "Do you want her to?" The sinking feeling in my abdomen as I await his answer must be due to the alcohol. Funny, I'd never experienced that effect before.

"No," he says, waving his hand at me. "No. 's not the point."

I choose to interpret the wave of relief I feel as yet another product of the whiskey. I take a step toward him, and the room spins, so I stop. "Then why does it matter?"

"Who's gonna love me?" he says, his voice very small and ever-so-slightly slurred. "Nobody loves me. Teyla doesn't, Elizabeth doesn't, Chaya didn't, even Nancy and my parents didn't love me."

"Oh," I say. I cast about for something appropriate to say, but I can't think of anything. This is why I don't drink often... I hate not having total control of my mind. I should have thought of that before I agreed to come here tonight. But when he asked me to join him, I wasn't really thinking about much of anything. Well, nothing appropriate, anyway.

He continues, his head still in his hands. "I agreed to come to Atlantis 'cause I didn't have anyone at home who would care if I was gone forever. And now I don't even have anyone here to care."

"Lots of us care about you," I say, speaking carefully so that I can pre-screen each word before it comes out of my mouth.

"I just want someone to love me," he whispers, and then he looks up at me with a broken, lost look in his gorgeous green eyes, and I feel myself preparing to launch myself at him, gather him in my arms, and tell him that everything is going to be okay. Thank god that the alcohol slows my actions enough that I can stop myself before I actually do such a thing.

Instead, I resort to snarkiness. "You're drunk."

He shakes his head, and the movement makes me dizzy. "Doesn't mean it's not true."

Okay, so snarkiness didn't work. I cross to the sofa, taking each step very slowly so that I don't end up with my nose on the floor. Gingerly, I sit down beside him, stupidly ignoring the warning bells going off in my head at the proximity. "You'll find someone."

He smiles at me. "Thanks, Rodney." We sit in silence for a long time. Then he yawns and flops down onto the couch, stretching out and snuggling up to a pillow. "I think I'm just gonna sleep here."

I think about standing and walking to my quarters, but the very thought of such strenuous action makes me queasy. "Do you mind if I stay here a while?"

His only answer is a light snore, so I lean back onto the couch and close my eyes.

 

 

 **Four hours later**  
I wake up, feeling surprisingly clear-headed. I'm still sitting upright on Sheppard's couch (with, of course, a truly terrible pain in my neck from the position I'd been sleeping in—I should probably go and have Beckett x-ray it just to be safe), and Sheppard is still sleeping curled up with a pillow on the other end of the sofa, his feet pressed up against my thigh.

I know I should leave, but I find myself mesmerized by the soft, boyish expression on Sheppard's face as he sleeps. He always looks charming and playful, but it's usually at least partially a front, part of his persona. This expression, his sleep-face, is real, and I can't seem to look away. For now, my stupider parts seem to have agreed to let my intelligent side take over my thoughts, and I find myself just gazing at Sheppard's face without waves of inappropriate lust washing over me. Thank goodness for small blessings.

Oh well. I have some serious thinking to do, and I might as well do it here as anywhere else. Very carefully, I stand up and pick up the jacket he threw on the floor earlier when the warming effects of the alcohol kicked in. I gently lay the jacket over his sleeping form, feeling a bit ridiculous for doing something so disgustingly tender, then retreat to the chair beside the window, where I lock my gaze on his face while my mind races.

How could he think that no one loves him? Everyone on the station loves him. He's just a lovable guy. Teyla and Elizabeth love him—maybe it's not romantic, but that doesn't mean it's not love anyway. Beckett loves him. Ronon would walk through hell for him, even if he'd never admit it. Even I am a little bit fond of him, what with all the life-saving he's done for me.

And god knows everyone is attracted to him, even if they'd never consider acting on it. Even a super-heterosexual guy like me is attracted to him enough to have an incredibly weird dream about him. And I am straight. Like really, really straight. But someone like Sheppard is just so attractive that anyone would be able to see it. Even straight guys. Like me.

Yep. Straight as an arrow.

For a long time, I just sit there, watching his chest rise and fall. Finally, as the horizon starts to gain just a tiny bit of sunglow, I stand up to leave. As I walk for the door, though, Sheppard shifts in his sleep, and the jacket falls away from his arm. Without even thinking, I walk over and bend down to reposition it.

"Love you," he whispers.

I freeze, feeling the blood rush from my face. Then, as soon as I regain control of my muscles, I turn and bolt from the room.

 

 

 **Lunchtime**  
I'm sitting in the mess hall, pushing some peas around on my plate and wishing I'd just eaten an MRE or sent a lackey to the mess to get me some food instead of coming here myself. Several people have come to my table and asked to sit with me, but I've refused them all. I actually snarled at Beckett—I guess I'll have to apologize later. For now, though, I just want to be alone and indulge my black mood.

Was he talking to me?

He was clearly asleep when he said... it. Did he know I was there, or was he dreaming about someone else? And, perhaps more importantly, why was my gut reaction to his statement an overwhelming desire to say it back to him? It's tempting to dismiss that desire as a reflex—someone says they love you, you tell them you love them too. Maybe that's all it was. He told some dream woman that he loved her and I had a knee-jerk response to reciprocate. Nothing more. But I've been thinking about this all morning, and I keep coming back to the vague impression that maybe there was more to it than that.

Of course, there's an obvious reason for my reaction that has nothing to do with reflexes, but I'm just not willing to think about that right now.

Did I mention I'm straight? Because I am.

God, though, his eyes. When he told me that he just wanted to be loved, his eyes twisted a knife in my gut.

And of course he's here in the mess hall. I don't even have to look up to know that he just walked in. And of course he's walking toward my table, which I also just know without looking. I'm not ready to talk about any of this, so I prepare my blackest of black scowls and look up at him just as he reaches the table.

"Morning, Rodney." He ignores my get-the-hell-away-from-me look and plops down in the seat across from me. Of course. Some people don't know how to take a hint, and some people know how to take a hint but choose not to. I'm willing to bet that Sheppard is one of the latter group.

"It's afternoon, Colonel." I call him by his title rather than his name, hoping that he'll suddenly decide to take the damn hint and keep this conversation professional, and I ignore the fact that an alarmingly large percentage of me wants to call him John. Not Sheppard, but John. Scowling, I focus on my peas, which are unfortunately green, which makes me think about his damn eyes again.

"Yeah, well, it feels like morning. I've got a wicked headache." He grins, which I specifically don't see because I am specifically not looking at him, and it irritates me that I know his voice well enough to know when he's grinning while talking.

I grunt, hoping to discourage further conversation.

"You were gone when I woke up," he says with what could possibly be considered regret in his voice, and I send a stern oh-no-you-don't signal to my chest region to let it know that the light-hearted little leaps it's performing are unwelcome.

I am silent for a few seconds, running through thousands of responses and rejecting them all before coming up with a genius-level reply. "Yeah."

Thankfully, he seems distracted by his food for the next few minutes, so I don't have to suffer through more conversation. It occurs to me that I could just get up and leave at any time, because I finished my meal quite a while ago. But before I can finish my WTF calculations, I need to know what he remembers about last night, and so I have to bring it up to see his reaction: "Did you know you talk in your sleep?"

He chuckles. "I've been told that before. Why, what did I say?"

I spear a pea a little viciously with my fork, then say with a voice that I think sounds pretty convincingly flippant, "Oh, nothing much. You must have been having a Captain Kirk dream, because you were telling some girl that you loved her."

And since facial expressions can be more telling than words, I have to finally look up at his face again, which is a bad move since I have apparently forgotten that faces generally contain eyes, and his eyes have been wreaking havoc on my sanity for days, and today they are especially annoying because they contain an expression I don't quite know how to interpret. The last thing I need right now is even more ambiguity to factor in to my thoughts. And in addition to the strange look in his eyes, a blush is creeping slowly up his face. Has Sheppard ever blushed in front of me before? At the moment, I can't remember.

Suddenly, though, the expression vanishes, and his cheerful mask drops down over his face, blocking out all the weirdness I'd been analyzing. "Sorry. You know how sometimes you don't remember a dream until someone says something that reminds you of it, and then suddenly you remember every little detail?"

"So who was she?" I say, forcing myself to roll my eyes as if I didn't really care. And I don't really, as long as "she" isn't me. Or maybe I care, but I definitely don't want to hear the gory details of Colonel Kirk's love life. For many, many reasons.

He hesitates. "Just someone."

Silence falls, and I can't think of a good excuse to break it, so we sit silently for a while, my now-cold peas getting pushed vigorously around my tray while Sheppard eats his lunch.

"Rodney," he says finally, "about last night..."

Oh god. I can feel the panic rising, even though it's clear from his reaction to my telling him what he said in his sleep that he didn't consciously say those awful, wonderful words to me personally.

Wonderful? What the hell? When did I go from resisting the thought of even a purely physical response to him all the way to subconsciously hoping that he has a thing for me? It's nearly enough to make me want to wave my arms at a Wraith dart to get them to take me. Jesus, I need a vacation.

"I'm sorry. I get a little weepy when I'm drunk." He smiles, but it's too sad to be a real smile. "I remember saying something about being sad that no one loves me."

"God, Sheppard, do we have to talk about this?" I say, hoping that my voice sounds disgusted but pretty sure that it actually sounds pleading.

He pauses and looks into my eyes for a moment, then shakes his head. "No, I guess not."

"Thanks," I say. Then I jump up and rush from the mess hall, mumbling something about important business in the lab.

 

 

 **Nighttime**  
I'm standing outside a stasis chamber with a grizzled, wasted Ancient inside, only barely alive after a ten-thousand-year sleep. The poor bastard. To have survived this long in the chamber, he must have been fairly young when he stepped into it. Most of his life was spent sleeping, and he has nothing to show for it.

Then his eyes open, and of course he is Sheppard, and the door flies open, and he looks at me with the same lost eyes from last night and rasps, "Nobody ever loved me. I was here for ten thousand years and nobody loved me." As he collapses to the floor, dead, I wake up with a jolt.

He has an off-world mission in the morning, and if the past missions are any indication, he'll be putting his life on the line, probably because he'll do something reckless and stupid. I'm not scheduled for this mission. Why am I not scheduled for every mission? Clearly I'm the only thing standing between Sheppard's team and a virtually inevitable painful death.

What if he dies on this mission? I have no reason to think that he will, except that every mission is a possible death trap. But for some reason, the possibility bothers me more this time.

'For some reason.' As if I don't know what that reason is. I've got an obscenely high IQ and a Mensa membership to prove it, and on top of that, I'm not an idiot. Oblivious, maybe. In denial, probably. But not an idiot.

Colonel John Sheppard is a reckless, obnoxious pretty-boy womanizer with more hair than he has sense, and I am in love with him.

The Atlantis mission has had more than its fair share of catastrophe in the time we've been in the Pegasus galaxy, but at this moment my epiphany seems like the worst disaster yet.

 

 

 **Morning**  
At 0458, I'm standing in front of Sheppard's door, watching the clock. I've convinced myself that 0500 isn't too early for a visit to a military officer... don't they get up before daybreak all the time?

Twice in the two minutes before I can in good conscience knock on his door, I turn and tiptoe quickly away from his door, my nerve gone. But both times I turn around and return to stand in front of his quarters. This is important. At the moment, it seems like the most important thing I've ever had to do.

Finally, the time turns over to 0500, and I immediately knock on the door. Almost a full minute passes before the door opens to reveal a rumpled, bleary-eyed Sheppard dressed in a black tank top and navy-blue gym shorts. For a moment, I am speechless. How lucky will some woman be someday to wake up next to him every morning? I bet he's warm when he sleeps. I bet it would feel amazing to curl up beside him and drift off to sleep with his arms around me...

Get a hold of yourself, Rodney. No matter how adorable he looks when he's just woken up, you'll never be the one he wakes up next to. That's not the point of this conversation. I just want him to know. I don't expect or want anything to come of it. Even if we do happen to be on the same page, he's military, and they're still too sensitive about this kind of thing, so nothing will ever happen.

He blinks at me several times. "Rodney?" he finally asks. "What time is it?"

"0500," I respond. "Listen, can we talk for a minute?"

He blinks again, then rubs his eyes. "Can't it wait until a decent hour?"

"Isn't this a decent hour? You're military."

For a few seconds he doesn't say anything. Then he says, "Go away," and reaches for the controls on his door.

I dart through the door before it can close. "It'll just take a minute." I look around his quarters, suddenly feeling guilty about pushing my way inside when he clearly wanted me to remain outside. "Can I come in?"

"No," he growls, clenching his teeth. He grabs my arm, squeezing it painfully hard, and pushes me back into the hallway. "Whatever you want to say, you're saying it in the hall, and then I'm going back to bed."

"Fine," I say. "It's better this way anyway." I take a deep breath, then speak quickly, even for me. "You said the other night that no one here loves you. I just wanted you to know that lots of people love you. Everyone here loves you. That's all." It's not enough, and I know it's not enough, but at least it's truthful. It's just not the whole truth.

"Uh, thanks?" he says after staring at me for a moment, still looking very bleary and sleep-deprived.

And suddenly, I find that I'm not quite finished talking after all. Imagine that. Rodney McKay has more to say. "It's just that if anything happens to you, on a mission or whatever, I wanted you to know that you're not alone. You're not unloved."

"I know that people care about me," he says, his forehead wrinkling with the concentration needed to follow my conversation this early in the morning. "That wasn't what I meant. I thought you didn't want to talk about this."

But I have my nerve now, and I need to finish before I lose it, so I ignore him. "And I wanted you to know that whether you die tomorrow or live for ten thousand years in a stasis chamber, someone will love you for all that time."

His blinking speeds up.

"For the rest of your life," I finish, weakly, hating myself for the cliché even as I say it.

"Jesus, Rodney," he whispers. For one incredible, terrifying moment, I think he's going to lean in for an embrace, but instead he shakes his head and says, "It's too early for this," and I'm left standing in the hallway staring at his door as he closes it in my face.

 

 

 **Afternoon**  
As I walk into the command center, Elizabeth glances up and frowns. "Rodney, if you're here to ask why Sheppard and his team aren't back yet again, I'm going to confine you to your quarters without your radio."

I level a withering glare in her direction, then spoil the effect by asking, "Are they okay?"

"Yes, they're okay," she snaps, and I'm actually a little honored that I've been able to get under her skin enough to make her snap at me. Elizabeth never snaps. Have I really been that annoying today? I should get a medal or something. "Just like they were okay ten minutes ago when you radioed, and twenty minutes ago when you 'just happened to stop by' and an hour ago when you suddenly needed my permission to activate a harmless device you'd already been using and oh, while you were here, you just thought you'd ask about the mission..."

"You'd think that my concern for my crewmates would be endearing."

She narrows her eyes, searching my face. "Why are you so worried about this mission? It's one of the least-dangerous ones we've had in months."

I shrug, trying to seem nonchalant. "Just let me know when they get back, okay?"

Elizabeth purses her lips, and I know that something bad is about to happen. "Rodney, why don't you come talk to me in my office?"

 

 

 **Twenty Minutes Later**  
"And so this morning I went to his quarters, and I may or may not have told him..." I stop, horrified that I'd even told her this much. At least I haven't mentioned The Dream or the fact that I can't stop myself from panting after him like a pimply teenager. I clamp my mouth shut and glance out the glass walls of Elizabeth's office to make sure that none of the command staff can hear our conversation.

Elizabeth nods slowly, and after a moment she murmurs, "That you love him?"

I let out a long, ragged breath, glad that I didn't have to say it out loud. "Is it that obvious?"

"I don't think he had any idea, if that's what you're wondering."

"Did you know?"

Her mouth twitches up into a tiny smile. "I had my suspicions."

"And..." My voice trails off, but I clear my throat and try again. "And is that... okay?"

"I don't have a problem with it, but if this is going somewhere, you'll need to talk to John about the implications on his career." She frowns again. "Is this going anywhere? What did Colonel Sheppard say?"

"Nothing. He basically closed the door in my face." Literally and figuratively. I regain some of my characteristic bravado, which I'd been sorely missing in the past few days, and continue, "You'd think he'd be flattered that the smart guy had a thing for him. He probably doesn't get a lot of brainy types who can see past his mindless frivolity." All at once, I'm done with this conversation. I've hit my limit of awkwardness for the day. "Anyway, nothing's going to come of it, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone what I said."

"Of course not."

I walk to the door of her office, and then I turn around and say, "I'm not gay."

"Of course not," she says again, with a twinkle in her eye.

As I wave my hand over the door controls and walk out of her office, Elizabeth calls out, "I'll let you know the moment they get back."

I turn and meet her eyes. "Thank you."

 

 

 **Early Evening**  
Elizabeth doesn't have to let me know, though, because I'm standing in the gate room when the Stargate activates and the team strolls through. Even though I had no reason to be concerned, the relief I feel when Sheppard steps through into Atlantis is so profound that my knees start to shake. With all the angst I've been feeling, they could have at least been running from something. It would make me feel better about all the worrying I've done. As it is, they're chatting and laughing as they walk toward the stairs. Teyla even has flowers dangling from her hand as if they'd spent the whole mission picking daisies and sunbathing.

After the moment of relief passes, though, Sheppard swings his P-90 forward and I notice his arm muscles as they move, which has an entirely unexpected effect on entirely different parts of my body. It's bad enough that I've been fantasizing about him alone in my quarters and that I've pretty much admitted to his face that I'm in love with him. Do I really have to moon after him all the time, noticing tiny things like the way his arms move while he walks?

I try to look very busy as they walk past me on their way to the debriefing. Sheppard rather obviously doesn't look in my direction, but Teyla locks eyes with me, and the insufferably compassionate look on her face immediately lets me know that he told her what happened at his quarters this morning.

"Dr. McKay..." she starts.

I press my hand to my radio earpiece, pretending to hear a call from Zelenka. "Yes yes, I'll be right there." I smile at her and shrug, then take off toward the transporter, like a coward. But I just don't feel up to talking to Teyla about my feelings right now.

When I get to the lab, I throw myself into my work, and I spend some time berating Zelenka and the other scientists for being incompetent. It helps my mood.

 

 

 **Nighttime Again**  
Just like before, he's standing in the door of the lab. Was it really only forty-eight hours ago that he asked me to come drink with him? It's hard to believe that so recently I honestly believed that I just saw him as a friend and nothing more, especially since now that I know how I feel about him, it's so ridiculously obvious that I've felt that way for a long, long time. God, I'm so oblivious sometimes. I get so caught up in my work that I don't pay enough attention to other things.

And now he's standing there, and I wish I wasn't such a coward, because I really want to look at him. I just can't do it. I have no idea what to say to him, and I absolutely don't want to know what he has to say to me. If he doesn't share my feelings, I'll be crushed, much as it pains me to admit it. But if he does share my feelings... well, that's terrifying too, just in a different way.

He must know that I know he's there, but he doesn't speak, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start this conversation.

Two full minutes go by before he finally says, his voice low, "We need to talk."

How had I not noticed how amazing his voice sounded before? Hearing it now, knowing what I now know, I can't imagine anything more intoxicating—not even the whiskey from two nights ago. I glance up at him but don't let my gaze linger for even a full second. "I know."

"Elizabeth suggested that I go for a ride to the mainland in Jumper 2. Want to come along?"

"No," I say, hoping that he would misinterpret my shortness for annoyance rather than pure fear.

He steps toward me and puts his hand on my shoulder. I'd always scoffed at movies and books that described electricity when people touch, but I feel stunned, singed, by the contact. "Please, Rodney," he drawls.

I can't speak at all, which is a very unusual feeling for me, so I take in a deep, ragged breath and nod.

 

 

 **Midnight**  
We don't speak at all during the ride to the mainland. Not a single word. Sheppard lands the jumper in a deserted field, nowhere near the Athosian settlements. When the jumper is down, he lowers the ramp, powers down the jumper, and strides out into the field. I follow him at a slower pace.

When I reach him, he's already sitting down on a patch of soft moss, looking up at the stars. I sit beside him, closer than I would normally sit but still a platonic distance away. While he stares at the stars, I focus on the moss.

After a long silence, he says, "Have you had many relationships with men?"

I jerk my head around to look at him. What an odd question to start this conversation with—it wasn't even on my list of things we might talk about here in this starlit field. But it seems like a legitimate question nonetheless, so I answer, "No. None."

He draws in a deep breath. "Me either."

Which doesn't explain a single thing, of course. I still have no idea where we stand. Are we about to lose our friendship? Are we about to begin a relationship? If we are heading for a relationship, it will have to be a semi-secret one, and am I comfortable with that?

I turn and look at him again. Yes. I am comfortable with that. Even a secret relationship with this man is better than no relationship with him at all. But I'm still not taking the lead in this conversation. I've said enough. Let him take the next step.

Finally, he does. "I was pretty groggy this morning, so I want to make sure we're on the same page. Just so we're clear, when you came to my room this morning, it seemed like you were trying to say that you..." He hesitates, clearly uncomfortable. "That you love me."

"Yes," I murmur.

"And you meant that?"

"Absolutely," I say, impressed with myself for not even hesitating. "Do you think I would say it if I didn't mean it?"

He actually smiles a bit. "Probably not." He runs a hand through his perpetually-rumpled hair and then continues. "So what now?"

A nervous laugh escapes me. "That depends entirely on how you feel. I've put myself out there. It's up to you to decide where to go with it."

Sheppard doesn't say anything for a while, and it strikes me that my conversations these past few days have been unusually full of silence. Then he says, "It was you."

Confused, I wrinkle my forehead. "What was me?"

"When you were in my quarters that night and I told someone I loved them in my sleep," he says, and my breath catches as he continues, "it was you."

Dreams are strange and irrational, though, so I have to ask, "Did you mean it?"

He doesn't answer in words. He just turns to me, his eyes looking unusually brown in the moonlight, and smiles.

Our hands are on the ground between us, and I inch my hand over so that our pinky fingers are just touching. After a moment, he flexes his hand upward to cover mine—we don't lace our fingers together, but it's nice to feel the weight of his hand on mine. He looks back up at the sky, but I keep my face turned toward him.

I lean over slightly and raise my free hand to his face, my heart pounding and my breath coming fast. Very, very slowly, I cup his cheek in my hand. Although he looks pretty clean-shaven, his face is rough with short, fine stubble, and it's unbelievably arousing to feel the texture on my palm. He closes his eyes and leans slightly into my hand. I use my thumb to rub his long, beautiful eyelashes. I'd never been close enough to really see them before.

I put pressure on his cheek to turn his face toward me, and I lean in. I pause just before I get to his lips and whisper, "Is this okay?" After all, nothing would spoil the moment like being punched in the face, pushed to the ground, and zapped with a Wraith stunner for being too forward.

But he nods, his eyes still closed, and moves toward me, and when our lips meet it's mind-blowing—like no other person's kiss has ever mattered or will ever matter again. The kiss deepens and becomes more insistent, and my hand slips from his cheek to his back, flattening against the hard planes of his muscles.

"I love you," he says against my mouth, and I nearly burst into tears before I remember that manly men don't cry with happiness.

And then, because there's nothing stopping me from reciprocating, I do. "I love you more."

He laughs. "You always have to one-up everyone around you, McKay."

I shrug, letting my lips slide across his rough cheek. "What can I say? It's in my nature."

"How long?" he asks.

"Well, I haven't actually measured it since college..." I begin, deliberately misinterpreting his question.

His mouth quirks up in a smile, and I've never seen anything so mesmerizing as his lips, still moist from our kiss. "How long have you felt this way, Rodney?" His voice is soft, like chocolate.

I've been thinking about that ever since I realized how I felt, and so I already have an answer. "I've been interested in you since Antarctica, and I've loved you platonically since the incident with the bug on the jumper. I think I fell all the way when you had that thing with Chaya, because I was more jealous than I had any right to be. I only realized all this after you talked in your sleep, though." I smile at him, laying my palm on his neck and feeling his strong pulse beneath my hand. "How about you?"

He closes his eyes and sighs contentedly. "Forever." He reopens his eyes and kisses me very lightly on the lips. "I've always had a soft spot for you, but I knew for sure when you blew up that solar system and we both nearly died."

"Five-sixths of a solar system," I can't help but correct.

"Whatever." His arm snakes around me and pulls me closer to him.

"If you've known for a while," I ask, outrageously thrilled by the realization that I'm getting to feel those muscles I've been admiring from a distance, "why didn't you say anything?"

He pulls away, looking into my eyes, and I find myself wondering if he thinks mine are as beautiful and expressive as I think his are. After a beat of silence, he says, "I've got a lot to lose here. I wasn't going to risk it unless I was sure you felt the same."

"If you can't take the chance, I understand." I couldn't live with myself if I ruined his career for him. He does love his job, and Atlantis needs him even more than I do, if that's possible.

He chuckles, tracing my jaw line lazily with a finger. "I wouldn't take the chance if I wasn't sure it was worth it."

"And I'm worth it?" I ask, hearing a waver in my voice and hoping I don't sound too much like I'm fishing for a compliment. I'm not, really. It just doesn't make much sense to me that someone like Sheppard would actually want me.

"Oh, McKay," he growls, "you have no idea."

"You know," I say, my voice shaking because somehow it seems riskier to admit this than to admit the love thing, "I've been dreaming about you." And I kiss him again, so that if he's weirded out by that, I won't have to see his face.

Instead of being weirded out, he smiles against my lips and breathes, "Tell me what you dreamed."

I start to describe it, but this is still too new, and I can't bring myself to say certain words out loud to another man, even if it is John. It will happen eventually, I'm sure. Just not yet. "I can't," I admit after several failed attempts filled with stutters, blushes, and 'you knows.'

He draws in a deep breath and reaches down to tug my shirt up and over my head. My breath catches, and he murmurs, "Show me, then."

Quickly, before either of us can lose our nerve, we shrug off our clothes and stare at each other, feeling a little sheepish. Then we lie down side-by-side in the grass and kiss for what feels like hours, our hands roaming over each others' bodies above the waist, both of us hesitant to move lower. Then it hits me: I'm lying in a field kissing John Sheppard by the light of a different galaxy's stars, which is what I've subconsciously wanted to do for as long as I've known him, and he has said that he loves me, and suddenly it feels only natural to slide my hand down and wrap my fingers around him.

Surprised even though he was the one who suggested this, he chokes a bit and nearly bites my tongue, but after only a second of tensing up, he relaxes into my hand and moves even closer to me, growling nonsense words in his soft leather voice as I move my hand over his smooth skin. After a few minutes, he tenses up again, then gasps my name and closes his eyes. When he's done, he pulls me close and buries his face in my neck for several minutes while his breathing steadies.

Finally, he pulls away and growls, "Your turn." And when he touches me, it's electric, it's explosive, it's perfect... it's over embarrassingly soon. I blush. "Sorry," I say, kissing his lips gently.

He chuckles. "Don't worry about it. We have the rest of our lives to get it right."

Great. So now in addition to single-handedly saving the lives of everyone in Atlantis and most of the Pegasus galaxy, I have to invent a way to make two men live forever so that "the rest of their lives" constitutes more than just fifty or sixty more years. Because with John Sheppard, I don't think that fifty or sixty years will be nearly enough.


End file.
